Rhonda Kaiser of Cafeteria Culture testifies on community composting
Rhonda Kaiser, program and policy director at Cafeteria Culture, describes students in Harlem bringing food scraps to a local composter and using the compost in school gardens. She urges policies that support local, human-centered composting and zero-waste habits.
Next up, Rhonda Kaiser.
Hi, I'm Rhonda Kaiser, Cafeteria Culture's Program and Policy Director.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify and for the Council's attention to waste equity and environmental justice through policy.
Removing the waste burden from the streets and making waste diversion accessible to more New Yorkers is a great start.
We hope we can keep our sights on reducing the truck traffic also that is hauling it away and on waste stream diversion.
Last year, our cafeteria culture students in Harlem brought the almost one metric ton of food scraps that they collected from their cafeteria to our local partner, Compost Power.
This human-powered team puts a local face on food scrap diversion, collection, and processing for our students.
And now our students use their compost made with their own cafeteria food scraps in their own school garden.
Access to the actual physical benefits of compost, not just theory, helps our student understand that their food scraps belong to them and that they are not merely observers of the decisions shaping their environment.
They are stakeholders with power to create positive
positive climate action in their own communities.
Climate action that helps them grow their own food.
This is what makes them want to divert their food scraps.
Imagine a city where food scraps are no longer hauled away as a burden, but made into a resource to be returned to the soil and used for benefit in local communities.
Thanks to the city council, we're building a robust community compost network to make this kind of zero waste diversion goals real.
These local community compost sites disrupt the truck-based, polluting, industrial model of hauling our waste away as a burden.
By composting...
Locally in our schools, we can build participation across generations.
Creating immediate and accessible environmental benefits cultivates the long-term habits that a zero-waste future requires.
And together, with the right policies, the right infrastructure, and the willingness to keep prioritizing more human-centered solutions, we can continue to build the zero-waste future now.
Thank you.